Modern DNA evidence corroberates aboriginal legend

Along the Finke river in central Australia (where the family heads to next week!) is a population of palm trees. This is interesting as there is no continuous path for them to have got there from the coast of Australia. It used to be thought they might be a remnant population from several million years ago, until DNA evidence showed them to have originated from the north coast of Australia much more recently, only 7,000-31,000 years ago. Described in an original Nature article, and ABC news report from 2012. Amazingly, recent translations of aboriginal legends have shown that traditional knowledge of the transplanting of these palms from the northern coast to central Australia has been passed down in oral tradition to the present day. This suggests that orals traditions such as this may have been passed down for 30,000 years or more, quite astounding. Read the ABC news article here.

Introduction

So. Rather than leave everything to Facebook and all the anoyances that entails I have ditched my account and turned my old site into a blog. There are some rather old overviews of my past work, a few random pages on my interests and, by default, whatever random stuff I've felt like posting.